There are still many parents who are worried about giving vaccines to their children for hearing the risk of Vaccines Cause Autism. But until now there has been no scientific evidence supporting the statement.
This concern can be understood because the cause of autism itself is still uncertain. If something bad happens to the child, it is very natural that the parent wants to find the cause. Parents are also looking for various factors that are suspected to be a trigger.
Among these factors, vaccination is one of the things deemed to be causing autism. A lot of information circulated about vaccines cause autism, from individual opinions of healthcare institutions. As a result, diseases that should be anticipated by vaccines become unhandled and bring their own risk for those who reject the vaccine.
One ingredient that is considered as the cause of autism is thimerosal, which is a preservative in the vaccine. This ingredient is considered to be a poison that attacks the central nervous system that triggers autism in children. Since the 1980’s era, autism cases have risen dramatically in the UK. However, among the many vaccines given to children, only one contains thimerosal, namely DTP vaccine (diphtheria, Tetanus, pertussis).
MMR Vaccine Not Proven Cause Autism
Vaccine rumors have been the cause of ASD’s been a long time in the 1990’s decade. From the BMJ page, it is revealed that the movement originated from the idea of a former physician named Andrew Wakefield.
In 1998, he concluded the relationship between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine with autism and his studies were published in The Lancet Journal. Wakefield’s research, then triggered an international trust crisis in MMR vaccine security.
As The Lancet Journal realized the error, they immediately withdrew the writing. General Medical Council, a public agency that maintains an official list of medical practitioners in the UK, declares Wakefield to violate ethical protocols while conducting research. The children who were samples turned out to have a relationship with the researchers because they were the children of Wakefield’s colleagues.
In fact, ideally, researchers should not have a close proximity to their research samples. Later, The Lancet only knew cheating after 12 years of the journal’s “desk” on their site. Even though it has been withdrawn, Lancet is obviously a hoax, the anti-vaccine movement spread due to Wakefield’s hoax research.
In fact, there are more than 40 other studies that deny Wakefield’s findings. One is what Mady Hornig, et al. (2008) Against tissue samples of colon in search of a measles RNA Virus. Of the 25 children with autism and 13 non-autistic children as control groups, only one child is found from each group with the measles RNA Virus. In conclusion, there is no link between the measles vaccine with autism.
The study of Kreesten Meldgaard Madsen, et al., titled “A Population-Based Study of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination and Autism” (2002) also tore down the argument of Wakefield. They monitored more than 537 thousand children for more than 7 years and found no relationship between age at the time of vaccination, the time since vaccination, or the date of vaccination with the development of autistic disorders.
Controversy of Vaccines cause autism
Autism is known as a growth disorder in children related to social interactions, lack of communication and other symptoms. Autism is usually diagnosed when the child is a toddler, and it is also more commonly found in boys than women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
To date, the cause of autistic children is still a medical mystery. However, popular opinion by experts often refers to the combination of genetic and environmental factors as an autistic cause in general.
Debates over whether MMR vaccines (measles, mumps, and rubella) caused autism to begin in 1998. At that, there was a study in the UK that was done over 12 children, and concluded the existence of a relationship between vaccinations and autism. The study gained a lot of media attention, thus triggering the debate on the pros and cons of vaccination.
But of course, keep in mind that the number of samples is 12 children are actually too little to be able to give any conclusions. Further studies are conducted more broadly, of which one is conducted by the International Health agency WHO, firmly concluded that there is no evidence that the MMR vaccine causes autism.
Thank you very much for reading Vaccines Cause Autism: 5 Controversies Research, hopefully useful.